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What if Walt Disney was the producer of Looney Tunes/Walt Disney Animated Classics/Disney Renaissance
In the history of The Walt Disney Company, the Disney Renaissance refers to the era from 1989 to 1999 during which Walt Disney Feature Animation (renamed Walt Disney Animation Studios in 2006) experienced a creative resurgence in producing successful animated films, many of them based on well-known stories, which restored public and critical interest in The Walt Disney Company as a whole. During this era, the studio produced and released 32 animated films: The Little Mermaid (1989), All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989), The Prince and the Pauper (1990), The Rescuers Down Under (1990), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Rock-a-Doodle (1991), Inside Out (1991), An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991), Aladdin (1992), FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Thumbelina (1994), The Lion King (1994), Trolls (1994), The Swan Princess (1994), The Pebble and the Penguin (1995), Pocahontas (1995), Balto (1995), Matilda (1996), All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 (1996), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Looney Tunes Presents: Space Jam (1996), Hercules (1997), Anastasia (1997), Cats Don't Dance (1997), The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (1998), Quest for Camelot (1998), Mulan (1998), Prince of Egypt (1998), The Iron Giant (1999), Tarzan (1999) and Stuart Little (1999). Are also discussed the animated films: An American Tail (1986) and The Emperor's New Groove (2000) as the beginning and end of the Disney Renaissance. History Background 1989–1999: Renaissance era 1985–1997: Success in television animation 2009-present: Second Renaissance era By 2000, the Disney Renaissance had come to an end. Disney continued to release small successes, despite also suffering box office bombs. Most of the animated films in the 2000s, such as How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Emperor's New Groove, Lilo & Stitch, Brother Bear, Home on the Range and A Series of Unfortunate Events, received very positive reviews and were box office successes. However, the expansion coincided with a decline in both revenue and quality of the department's output. Competition from other studios drove animator salaries to a high level, making traditional animated features a costly proposition and, beginning in 2000, massive layoffs brought staff numbers down to 600. Deciding that the reason for its unsuccessful box office draw was the fact that they still used traditional animation methods in a time when Pixar Animation Studios, DreamWorks Pictures and Blue Sky Studios were producing highly-successful CGI films, Disney converted WDFA into a CGI studio, performing more layoffs and selling off its traditional animation equipment. The Paris studio was shut down in 2003 and the Orlando studio followed suit in 2004. Walt Disney Feature Animation then announced that Home on the Range and A Series of Unfortunate Events would be the studio's last two 2D-traditional animated films. In 2005, Chicken Little, the studios' first full CGI animated feature, received generally mixed to negative reviews from critics, though it performed well at the box office. In 2006, The Walt Disney Company purchased Pixar for US$7.4 billion, and hired Pixar executives Ed Catmull and John Lasseter to serve as president and Chief Creative Officer, respectively, for both Pixar and Walt Disney Feature Animation, in which the latter was renamed to Walt Disney Animation Studios. Before the release of Lasseter's first original project, several other animated features, which were already in development before the arrival of Catmull and Lasseter, were in the midst of being released, these being Meet the Robinsons and Bolt. Both films received major adjustments after Lasseter's disapproval toward their initial pitches. Robinsons was a box office failure, but received critical acclaim, while the following Bolt received critical acclaim and was a modest box office success. In between these films, the studio also released the Looney Tunes animated short How to Hook Up Your Home Theater, done with traditional animation. Back in 2006, with The Walt Disney Company's acquisition of Pixar, it was announced that Lasseter's first order of business was to revive the classic Disney "fairytale" formula, with an animated project done primarily with traditional-animation. This was a response to the misconception that the world had grown "too cynical" for traditional fairytales, resulting in the studio abandoning all fairytale adaptations prior. To revive the genre, Lasseter rehired John Musker and Ron Clements (directors of The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Trolls and How the Grinch Stole Christmas) and Don Bluth (co-director of An American Tail, The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go to Heaven, Thumbelina, The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Anastasia), who pitched a musical adaptation of "The Frog Prince", set in New Orleans, Louisiana and with an African-American princess as the lead heroine. The Princess and the Frog became the first project greenlit by Lasseter, and production quickly began, with many of the artists and animators from the Renaissance era, returning to work on the film. In 2009, The Princess and the Frog was released worldwide, and reached critical acclaim amongst critics and audiences alike, being praised as a "return to form" for the studio. The film transcended its initial release, with the characters and story having been integrated in various divisions across the company, including the Disney Princess franchise, and the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts around the world, thus becoming a staple in both the company's legacy, and pop-culture; the first project from the studio to do so in nearly a decade. Today, some critics and pundits regard The Princess and the Frog as the modern turning point for the studio, and the film to have ignited what is currently considered Disney Animation's contemporary renessaince. Unfortunately, despite not a bomb, the box office returns for Frog were lower than the studio expected, bringing in $267,045,057 worldwide, and thus labeling the film as a financial disappointment. The title, which has the word "Princess", was blamed, as it supposedly turned away male audience members. As a result, the two following fairytale adaptation titles of "Rapunzel" and "The Snow Queen" garnered new, gender-neutral titles. In 2010, the studio released their version of "Rapunzel", Tangled, which gained widespread positive reviews and became a box office hit. Not only was Tangled the most successful film from the studio since 1994's The Lion King, it was also the film to have ignited a new method of artistic style, having uniquely blended features of both computer-generated imagery and traditional animation, while using non-photorealistic rendering, which gave the film the appearance of classic Disney animated features, despite being crafted in computer animation. Tangled's marketing, which relied heavily on action and pop-cultural references, was also a massive change from the studio's previous methods. Both the artistic style and marketing featured with Tangled would go on to become an influence for all computer-animated films to follow. On November 2, 2012, the studio would break the box-office record for the most money made on opening weekend for the entire Disney animated canon with the computer animated Wreck-It Ralph, based on the concept of centering a film around video games that dates all the way back to the 1980s, and was greenlit by Lasseter in 2009. Along with Ralph, the short Paperman was released, which broke ground with the use of the Meander software, which is a literal blend of traditional and computer animation. Wreck-It Ralph would go on to win numerous accolades for the studio, while Paperman became the first Walt Disney Animation Studios non-''Looney Tunes'' short to win the Academy Award for Best Short since 1969's It's Tough to Be a Bird. In April 2013, Walt Disney Animation Studios laid off fewer than 10 people out of a staff of more than 800. Because a majority of them were hand-drawn animators, there was exaggerated speculation on some animation blogs that the studio was abandoning traditional animation once again, an idea that the studio dismissed. In 2013, the studio released its version of "The Snow Queen', retitled Frozen, its 89th full-length animated film, on November 27. 2013. Like "Rapunzel" and "The Frog Prince" before it, the idea to develop an animated version of "The Snow Queen" had been circling throughout the studio for decades, but complications with the story prevented anything from coming to light. In 2008, however, John Lasseter approached director of Tarzan, Chris Buck, to helm a new tackling of the project. Once again, complications with the story interfered, but the project eventually moved forward once more in 2011, with the addition of writer Jennifer Lee, who previously worked on Wreck-It Ralph, as co-director, as well as Kristen and Robert Lopez, who developed both the songs and key story points for the film. Frozen broke numerous records with widespread critical acclaim, and became a financial juggernaut, eventually surpassing The Lion King as the studio's highest-grossing film, and soon became the highest-grossing animated film of all time. In 2014, Frozen won both Academy Award nominations for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song with "Let it Go". The overwhelming success of Frozen, in the eyes of various film pundits, solidified the idea that the Walt Disney Animation Studios was in the midst of a modern renaissance. On January 7, 2013, Disney announced a new comedy CGI animated film, Storks, which was originally scheduled for a 2015 release, but was pushed to September 23, 2016. On the same day, they announced one of Disney's upcoming fims, Smallfoot, which was originally scheduled for release in 2016, but was later moved to 2018. On February 7, 2014, the studio released The Lego Movie, a film animated by Animal Logic. It was met with positive reviews and proved to be a box office success. On the year 2015, the studio released three hand-drawn animated films, The Berenstain Bears, a adventure comedy based on the well-known book series by Stan and Jan Beresntain; Looney Tunes Presents: Mice and Ducks Run, a road comedy adventure starring the Looney Tunes characters; and The Lost Dragon, a fantasy adventure film; all of them received very positive reviews and were box office successes. On March 4, 2016, the studio released the buddy cop/spy-fi action-comedy film Zootopia. Centered around the modern world of anthropomorphic animals, Zootopia became a surprise hit for the studio, mirroring the success of Frozen. The film garnered universal acclaim amongst critics, being praised for its humor, its two main plots, timely and mature themes and well-written characters, among other feats. Financially, Zootopia would go on to become Disney Animation's second highest-grossing feature, behind only Frozen, with a worldwide box office total of over $1 billion; the fourth animated film to ever reach the milestone. Additionally, with Zootopia's record-breaking success, Walt Disney Animation Studios became the first animation studio in history to have more than one film pass the billion dollar mark at the global box office. Even further cementing its critical successs, Zootopia was honored by the American Film Institute as one of the top ten films of 2016, a feat extremely rare for animated motion pictures. Zootopia also earned the studio its third consecutive win for the Best Animated Feature category at the 89th Academy Awards. A few months (September 23, 2016 and November 23, 2016, respectively) following Zootopia, the studio released Storks, centering a hotshot package delivering stork and his female human partner delivering a baby; and Moana, centering the daughter of a chief embarking on a journey to save her Polynesian island. Storks was met with mixed-to-positive reviews from critics and was a box-office success, while Moana was a box office and critical success, grossing $600 million worldwide. New technology was created for the water, lava and hair effects. Moana also featured a heavy dose of hand-drawn animation, most notably in Maui's tattoos. The studio's next short, Inner Workings, was released alongside Moana. Reception Critical and public reaction Box office performance Awards Soundtracks Trivia